


Poison

by winnow



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon Compliant, Derek Hale is a Softie, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hale-McCall Pack, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Nogitsune Trauma, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Psychological Trauma, Scott is a Good Friend, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26660098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winnow/pseuds/winnow
Summary: Stiles knew if this didn’t kill him, Scott eventually would. Scott, with his wide fearful eyes and tight shoulders and fake grin that only appeared when Stiles was around. He understood it. He stabbed his best friend’s guts out. He nearly killed Coach. Hedidkill Allison. And no, he wasn’t going to shirk the blame. “The nogitsune made me do it!” was never going to cross his lips. No psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, friend, or family member was going to convince him otherwise.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski/Malia Tate
Comments: 9
Kudos: 140





	Poison

**Author's Note:**

> Story takes place after season 3B and just before season 4. Story inspired by my own spiraling depression and this exchange in S4 E4 “The Benefactor”:
> 
> **Liam: What are you?**
> 
> **Stiles: Uh, for a little while, I was possessed by an evil spirit. It was very evil.**
> 
> **Liam: What are you now?**
> 
> **Stiles: Better. Um...**
> 
> Jeff Davis was bad at a lot of things, but I never hated him more or felt more cheated as a viewer than when I realized we were never going to see Stiles work through the aftermath of the nogitsune. So like a good member of the Fandom, I wrote my own version. Also I was scary depressed and this helped keep me busy until I felt a little better.

It'd been over an hour and nothing was happening. Stiles took the rest of the pills fully expecting something by now - cramps, sleepiness, confusion. But _nothing_ was happening. Maybe nothing was ever going to happen but taking the pills and believing it would gave his mind something to do. He knew killing himself wasn't going to be an exact science, but he'd researched the meds and the doses and the timing so he felt like his efforts deserved some kind of payoff. If not death, then he'd happily settle for a vegetative state. Anything that would keep him from thinking. Feeling was also a perfect horror, but he’d cultivated ways to cork that back when his mom passed away. It was the thinking he couldn’t seem to control, that needed to cease and desist immediately.

Stiles knew if this didn’t kill him, Scott eventually would. Scott, with his wide fearful eyes and tight shoulders and fake grin that only appeared when Stiles was around. He understood it. He fucking stabbed his best friend’s guts out. He nearly killed Coach. He _did_ kill Allison. And no, he wasn’t going to shirk the blame. “The nogitsune made me do it!” was never going to cross his lips. No psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, friend, or family member was going to convince him otherwise.

Because there was a point… there was a point when he realized what was happening, that the game of Go he was playing wasn’t with smooth marblette pieces but with living, breathing people. And he still played it. With gusto. He’d long ago made peace with the fact that he was competitive enough to cheat, but murdering your best friend’s ex-girlfriend to win the mindgame a monster in your head initiated? That was doing the very fucking most. 

Stiles understood that he was fucked up, just not in the way his friends and family thought he was. PTSD? Okay, sure. But also, pseudopsychopathy. That was a real thing, easily hidden by ADHD. Social carelessness and unpredictability? Check. Faux rage-like reactions and sometimey aggressive behaviors? Yep and yep. Emotional instability and a disposition to criminality? Oh hell yes. There was a reason the fucking demon chose him. There was a reason Stiles let the demon in.

See, this is why he needed to stop thinking. This is why he needed to die. How many times had this conversation made the rounds in his head since they defeated the thing? 50? 100? 3000? If nothing else, the nogitsune taught him that he’s a true liability to the pack and a burden to his father. They all would be better off not having him around to a) screw shit up, b) remind them of all they’ve lost, or c) fucking kill them. Yes, Stiles needed to go before he did anymore damage. 

Sixteen Adderall and nine Xanax ago, he’d wondered if any of them smelled the suicidal intentions on him. Wondered if they would come crashing through the door to gut-punch out all his medicinal shame. It was unlikely. After a serious verbal blowout, his dad started working nights (and Stiles knew in the very pit of his heart that his father picked that shift so he didn’t have to spend anymore time at the dinner table staring at his mass murdering son). The pack only invited him over when it was painfully obvious they’d guilt tripped themselves into doing it. Lydia called at the same time twice a day, like she had an alarm set to remind herself that he existed. She never left a message of any substance. Just, “It’s Lydia. Call me.” No, there would be no interruptions tonight.

Twenty minutes later, he deviated from his initial plan. Instead of washing down stimulants, benzos, and painkillers with a shit ton of Vodka, he skipped right to the good stuff: 12 tabs of Methadone. Riding that wave of _fuck it_ , he threw in the Vicodin tablets left over from the injuries he’d sustained defeating – well, _himself_. It’d taken him three doctors to find one that would give him the goddamn pills. 

“This bruise on my chest? It won’t heal. It hurts.”

“Stiles, I don’t really see a bruise there. There’s an abrasion, though.” His childhood doctor moved in close to inspect the wound. “Did you scratch yourself here? What – Is that a – Stiles, did you do this to yourself?” 

“No,” Stiles mumbled and slid his shirt back on. He took the antibiotic cream his doc offered and left without another word.

“I was in a car accident and my body still aches all the time,” he said to the second doctor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” Dr. Pickerill was nice, Stiles decided. She was young and she was pretty. But her physical assessment was more thorough than he expected. She looked at his eyes and ears and in his mouth. She pressed on his shoulders, looked at his fingers and elbows, smoothed a hand down his back. She noted the way he held his breath when she touched him, and he hated himself for giving away so much so fast. 

“Well, you’ve definitely been though a physical trauma. Your muscles are coiled like bedsprings! I’ll write you a script for a light muscle relaxer. I can also refer you to a physical therapist –”

“No. I just want something to help me. I mean, to take the pain away.”

She sat down next to him, put her hand close to his knee. “…You know, it may be a good idea for you to see a mental health professional. Accidents like that can have lasting effects on people. How are you sleeping at night?” Stiles didn’t like that question. He said he’d take the muscle relaxer. Dr. Pickerill wasn’t fooled either. Or maybe she could just tell he was med-seeking and new better. Or maybe she saw a boy desperate to hurt himself and was trying to find a way to help him.

The third doc worked out of a small three-room office near the warehouse district. It was just him and an older lady whose eyes darted around the room at all times. In their one exam room, Stiles sat on a backless swivel chair because there wasn’t an exam table. The doc came in, said, “What can I do you for?” 

“Sometimes. I get nervous. On airplanes.” 

The doc laughed. “What’s your poison, kid?”

He walked away from that place with Vicodin and Xanax in one pocket, Methadone and a dime bag of weed in the other. He’d smoked the weed the second he got home, but the pills were saved for tonight.

Now it’d been two hours since he gulped a bunch of them down. He was still lucid, bored really. His mouth was a bit dry but that happened on the regular with Adderall. 

“I do believe it is time to imbibe.” Stiles twisted the cap off a fifth of vodka. He swallowed three healthy gulps, smacked his lips, shuddered violently, chuckled. While taking two more pulls, his eyes wandered over to his bedroom window. For a second, he fully expected to see Derek standing there, sour look on his ridiculously beautiful face. The guy had a master’s degree in Creepering and a bachelors in Emerging from Shadows. Over the last two years he’d grown accustomed to finding Derek’s glowing glare in the dark corners of his room. But no one was there. No one was ever there anymore.

Not that he blamed Derek for feeling weird about being in his room now. The fucking nogitsune had all but written in the sky “Stiles ♡s Derek!” That chessboard bullshit really pissed him off. Apparently, it was fine to terrorize and massacre everyone he knew but intimating that he thought of Derek as a king was crossing a line. The worst part was that Derek looked utterly confused by it. Like it’d never crossed his mind he might mean something to Stiles after all they’d been through together. Over the grainy video feed from that shitty bedroom security camera, Stiles had watched Derek shrug and completely dismiss the idea. And from his own face, he’d felt the demon smile wide at Stiles’ response of discontent.

Stiles shook the memory from his mind. He dragged his half full bottle of Vodka across the bed as he walked to the window. He drew a finger across the sill. It had dust on it now. Dust never settled before. There’d been too many warm werewolf bodies sliding over it too often. The last time Derek was here, he came in through the front door. He looked at Stiles like a broken thing, a bug, an unsightly stain on an otherwise pristine cloth. 

“Is your dad home?” Derek said, gently closing the front door behind him.

“No.” Stiles backed himself up to the staircase, remembering how no one liked him to get too close nowadays. But Derek advanced on him anyway.

“You’re here by yourself?” And for a split second, Stiles thought Derek was concerned. But it wasn’t that. It couldn’t be that. Derek must have said it like that because he was incredulous. It’s stupid to leave someone as dangerous as Stiles unsecured. 

Stiles coughed out a mirthless laugh, “I’m always alone, Derek.” 

“No. You’re not. You’re not, Stiles.”

Yeah. Yeah because it was him and the demon, wasn’t it. Stiles and Void Stiles. Dynamic fucking Duo.

Derek tilted his head, trying to catch Stiles’ eyes which were staring unblinkingly at the floor. “Are you sleeping at all?”

“What?”

“Sleep, Stiles. Rest?”

“Yeah.”

Derek pinched his lips together and exhaled. “I… I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

“If you already know the answer, what the fuck are you asking me for?” Stiles stomped up the stairs, tired of this game of cat and mouse. Tired of Derek doing that thing with his voice. That soft thing that made it sound like he cared about Stiles. Tired of Derek looking at him like that, placating, pretending. 

He threw himself on his bed like an emo kid. Derek banged around downstairs for a few minutes then stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring, for a few more. Stiles couldn’t see the man because he’d buried his face in his pillows, but he could tell that’s what Derek was doing. Just staring at what a complete fuck up and failure Stiles turned out to be. Stiles imagined Derek’s lip curled in disgust. 

Finally, Derek settled himself in the desk chair. He didn’t speak, so Stiles listened to him swivel in the chair, back and forth, back and forth. The cushioned gears made a sound like wind outside a window. Woomph woosh, woomph woosh, back and forth. It was the kind of white noise and rhythm his ADHD brain really liked and before he knew it, he was drifting off. 

As per usual, he woke up screaming. Only this time Derek was in the bed with him, holding him from behind and saying soothing things like “it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe now, I’ve got you” but that’s just shit people say to get you to shut up. Something moved just below his vision and Stiles looked down. To his horror, he saw masses of black lines eeling up both of Derek’s arms. He struggled to get out of the man’s embrace. Derek’s mouth was still by his ear, though, and he was whispering incomprehensible things.

“He poisoned you, Stiles. He poisoned you with hopelessness. Please let me take it…”

“Get off of me!” Derek loosened his arms and Stiles threw himself off the bed. He didn’t remember when he’d started sobbing, but now that he was out of Derek’s arms, his blubbering wracked his body hard enough to bend him at the waist. In his peripheral vision he saw Derek’s hand stretching toward him. 

“Please, Stiles.”

Stiles jerked away and pressed himself against the wall. The sobbing ceased but his eyes were pouring pitchers of unstoppable tears. “Why are you doing this?” and he didn’t mean to whine but it still came out that way. 

“I just want to help,” Derek said, edging off the bed. “We’re all trying to help-”

“Stop pretending!”

Derek reared his head back in surprise. “Pretending?”

Stiles reached across the dresser next to him and hurled everything onto the floor. “You don’t give a shit about me! No one gives a shit about me! So stop pretending you do! And you know what, Derek? I’m really – deep, deep down - I’m fine with it. They _shouldn’t_ care. I am trash, Derek. I am everyone’s inevitable demise. I am a catalyst of cataclysm.”

Derek shook his head, “That’s the poison talking.”

“No! You think I didn’t know this shit before that fucking demon came along? I knew. I knew. And it knew it too. That’s _why_ I was the perfect host.”

Derek stood in front of him, tears on his face too, and something in Stiles would not let him comprehend what that meant. So he just kept talking. Every time Derek opened his mouth, Stiles yelled over him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And it felt good to finally be honest about all this. It felt wonderful to not think, to just purge this from his mind even though Derek grew more and more upset and at one point beta-shifted in an effort to get Stiles to shut up. But Stiles persisted.

“It’s really funny, Derek. I don’t even get how you can stand the sight of me. I mean, I almost got your only remaining sibling killed. I helped people kill your uncle, like twice. And then there’s Erica. And Boyd…Your whole pack is dead. I was instrumental in it. I basically killed them.”

Derek was grimacing and Stiles thought this was the moment the man would finally admit the truth, but no. All he said was, “Stiles. You didn’t do any of that.” 

It made Stiles _furious_.

“Yes I did,” he said, sounding like Void Stiles even to himself. He fixed Derek with a steely glare. “Yes, I did. I got you arrested for your sister’s murder. I orchestrated Scott dismantling your new pack after you became alpha. I sold you out to Chris Argent. I sold you out to the Alpha pack. I would have sold you out to the darach if I’d had the chance. I fucked Malia because she’s pathetic but mostly because I thought it might piss you off. I did all those things on purpose. Because I hate you, Derek. In the very core of me, there is nothing but contempt and distrust for everyone I know. And for my father there’s even some pity, but mostly contempt. Because he knows whatever it was that I did to make my mother sick and he won’t tell me and he stopped her from telling me before she died. I hate all of you and everything is my fault.”

Derek roared and put his fist through the wall, inches from Stiles’ head.

“I wish you wouldn’t have missed.”

Derek closed his eyes, breathed hard between his fangs, “I wasn’t aiming for you.”

“Then I wish you had been.”

Derek’s eyes opened wide. He stared at Stiles. It was a long moment before he backed away. 

“I- I can’t fix this,” he whispered to himself. He looked wildly around the room before sprinting out of the house. 

That was two days ago, the last time Derek was here. That was when he decided today was the day he needed to die in order to stop thinking. If he died and stopped thinking he could feel like this all the time. Ohhh, how good it had felt to hurt Derek, to keep hurting Derek, to hurt himself. He’d actually jerked off thinking about the things he said and the shattered look on Derek’s face as he ran away. 

Two days was just enough time for Stiles to research doses and durations, to ignore that nice doctor’s phone calls and procure himself a bottle of booze. But he’d taken so many pills nearly 3 hours ago now, and nothing was happening. He was drunk as hell but not incapacitated or having any trouble breathing or even throwing up. He laughed at the irony of being so completely incompetent that he couldn’t even commit suicide right.

Suicide… Shit. He forgot to write the note. A suicide note was essential because this was Beacon Hills and if he didn’t leave a note someone was bound to think it was some kind of supernatural beasty that did him in. And in a way, it was, but not how they’d think of it. He was the monster. The monster was always him. The nogitsune just showed him how to stop hiding it. It showed him how to stop thinking, which is something fucking Adderall never managed to do. He was forever overthinking things. When he was little, all those thoughts came pouring out of his mouth. He never shut the fuck up. He ended up losing the few friends he had until he met Scott. After Scott got bit, well, then he was always on the lookout for a solution or resolution or quick fix to any of their problems. His brain was Snowpiercer, circling and circling until the end of time. 

But this note was going to be a doozy. He wasn’t going to think about what to write, that’s why he’d waited until the last minute to do it. He was going to channel that monster inside himself and say all the things he knew were true and then they wouldn’t even be sad that he was gone. 

Stiles stumbled over to his desk and plopped down in the chair. It smelled like Derek and he frowned at the attractive woodsy scent the werewolf had left behind. He opened his laptop, chuckling at how wild his hands and arms were. He’d knocked over the remaining pills and they spilled across the surface of the desk in a veritable rainbow of pharmaceutical colors. 

It was the Methadone that tipped him off. Oh, it was the right shade of ugly orange but the pills, upon close inspection, were the wrong shape. Methadone is a weird boxy pill. Not round, not square. These pills were perfectly quadrangular. Stiles scooped up the remaining eight tablets and held them under his desk lamp. The scoring on the backs of the pills was obviously done by hand with a very sharp knife. It was cut into the tablet, not pressed in as it would have been if it was made by the pharmaceutical company.

He threw the pills on the ground. He scrabbled his drunk fingers across the desk to inspect the others. The Xanax had the same cut-in scoring as the Methadone. The Vicodin had a hint of yellow when it should have been bright white. His Adderall was nearly perfect; perfect oval shape, perfect shade of blue, but the “dp” imprint was just a hair off. He’d been taking this stupid pill for ten years, he knew what that imprint was supposed to look like. 

“Motherfucker!” He threw the pills across the room and nearly fell out of the chair when he saw Scott standing in the doorway. 

“We couldn’t let you do it, man. We knew you we’re in a bad place. We know the nogitsune did a number on you, more than anyone else. But we – _I_ couldn’t let you check out like this. Not like this.”

Stiles surprised himself by busting out laughing. 

Scott did not laugh with him. “Derek says the nogitsune poisoned you. That it left something in you, like a virus, and it’s infecting you. And Stiles,” he stepped into the room. “you are not okay, buddy. When was the last time you ate something? Or slept? Or showered? Dr. Hemingford and the lady doctor you went to for pills were both worried enough to call your dad. You’ve been saying stuff that’s just like, _so far_ from the truth. Three days ago, your dad came to my house at 4 in the morning, full on crying from what you said to him. And it’s not just that it’s hurtful things you say. It’s that he doesn’t know how you ever came to believe any of that stuff.”

“Delusional? You think I’m delusional.”

Scott shook his head, “I think you need help. I think what happened to you was worse than any of us could imagine. That thing… it’s like it raped you, dude. Nonstop, for weeks.”

Stiles started laughing again but it didn’t feel like laughing because tears were spilling down his cheeks and he was frowning. “It’s n-not rape if you consent. I let it in. I wanted it. Y-y-you think that thing r-r-rode me but it was really m-m-m-me using it as an excuse to do all the b-bad things in my head.”

“No.”

Stiles shrieked, “Yes!”

“No.” Scott wrapped his arms around his best friend. Stiles didn’t know how he’d gotten close enough to do that. “Everyone is downstairs. Deaton has a salve and tonic that will help you relax and clear your mind. And then, Stiles? Then you are going to let us – your family – suck this shit out of you.”

He tried to push Scott away but the stupid kid was too strong. Scott’s left hand had dipped under his shirt and was rubbing circles into his lower back. It felt good and Stiles wanted it to stop. Stiles thought about how strong he was with the demon inside him. He thought about the 46 people he murdered in the hospital. He thought about the 12 people he slaughtered at the station. Some of those people he’d known his entire life. He recalled their screams, breaking bones, bloodied bodies. It had been so easy. He could still be strong like that again if he could just catch a case of death. If he died, he could… he could be… he would…

Stiles lifted his head to blink at Scott. “It’s still trying to kill me. It wants me dead. It wants me to do and say all these terrible things and then kill myself because _its_ divine move is that it never dies. It never dies, Scott. It’s evil and hatred and chaos and even trapped in that box, it will never ever die.”

Scott’s bottom lip trembled. His arms tightened around Stiles and he suppressed the urge to caress the boy’s face. It seemed like this was first time he’d seen his best friend, his brother, in months. “I know. But we’re not gonna let that happen. It can’t have you.”

Stiles dropped his head back onto Scott’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered between shuddering breaths. “I’m sorry. I killed Allison and I’m so sorry, Scott.”

They stood like that for a while and cried together. When Stiles would tighten up and try to pull away, Scott would reactivate the salve by rubbing his thumb in soft circles across Stiles’ lower back. It worked faster than Deaton had anticipated, but then Stiles always did have a fast metabolism. 

Finally, Stiles gave in to the hug and wrapped his arms around Scott. “I got so much snot on your shirt, man. I’m sorry about that, too.” 

Scott chuckled, happy to hear his friend sounding more like himself. “You ready?”

“Yeah. But also, I am so fucking drunk. Maybe I should try to barf some of this out first.”

“Well,” Scott pulled back, patted him on the shoulder, “Lydia prepared your living room for every eventuality. There’s barf pails and bed pans and like 200 towels.” He smiled at the sound of Stiles’ real laugh, short and quiet as it was. “And Derek is down there. He’s gonna stay with you and your dad after... afterward.”

“He knows,” Stiles began and bit his lip. “He knows how I feel about him now.”

“Course he knows. Dude, you could smell that shit on you for the past year. But I mean, think about it, Stiles. Why does he keep hanging around? Derek coulda left BH a million times since we wrapped up all the stuff with the darach. But he didn’t. He just keeps showing up in your bedroom to ask you for dumb shit.”

They headed toward the door. “Don’t get my hopes up, Scott. I’m too fragile right now.”

Scott snorted. “I don’t have to get your hopes up. He may not do anything about it right now, but I can smell that shit on him, too.”

At the bottom of the stairs stood his father. His eyes were red-rimmed but he smiled at his son and hugged him like only a father could once Stiles was within arm’s reach. Behind him was Melissa, a woman who’d been caring for him since he lost his mother. Stiles opened his mouth to say something, anything, about the way the nogitsune used her love for him against her, about the horrible things the demon said to her with _his_ mouth.

“Don’t,” she said waving a hand either to swat away his palpable shame or to fan her tearing eyes. “Just hug me too.”

Derek stood by the door. When Stiles looked at him, he blushed. “I uh, called in the cavalry.”

“I’m really glad you did.”

Deaton came to a stand as they entered the living room. He had a small jar of jelly in one hand and a corked bottle in the other. 

“That the tonic?” Stiles inclined his head toward the bottle.

“It is,” Deaton said. “It tastes horrendous, but you should drink it anyway.”

Stiles nodded and tried to seem nonchalant as he looked around the room. Kira and her mother were seated on the couch. Kira leaned forward and gave him the biggest, friendliest grin. At the window was Malia, looking like a trapped animal. They made eye-contact, then she flashed her eyes, bared her teeth and leered at him. Behind him, the sheriff cleared his throat and Melissa whispered, “Yeah wow.” 

“Gonna have to work on her social skills,” Stiles murmured to Scott.

Where the coffee table should have been was a grey mat instead, likely stolen from the high school. There were blankets and buckets and implements and hospital appliances carefully placed around it. And, as Scott had said, about 200 neatly folded towels. At the head of the mat was Lydia, sat on one hip with her legs crossed at the ankle. She looked regal, annoyed, and relieved. 

“How many times did I call you, Stiles?” 

Stiles scratched his temple, “Um. Many.”

She pursed her lips, “And that alone didn’t tell you something was wrong?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just raised one perfect hand and patted it gently on the mat. 

He sat himself down. Drank the tonic when Deaton handed it to him (it tasted like _mushrooms and feet_ ). His father and Melissa rubbed salve on his face, neck, arms, and hands. He knew the stuff was working when he began to quantify his actions over the past two months. He realized the enormity of what he’d almost done. 

“My god. Oh my god, you guys.”

Scott laid hands on him first. A tangle of black lines raced up his arms. “It’s over now,” he said.

Derek was next. He rested one hand on Stiles’ hand and the other cupped the back of his neck. There weren’t as many black lines as Scott, but the ones Derek had were twice as thick. Malia flopped down at Stiles’ feet. She wrapped her hands around his ankles then slid them up into his sweatpants to fiercely grip his calves. Noshiko leaned forward and placed three fingers on his forehead. Stiles closed his eyes. He would do this for them. He would let them do this for him. 

The towels weren’t for Stiles at all, they were for the others. They’d draw the poison from him and expel the toxic black ooze into the fabric. The towel went into a bucket, which his dad and Melissa promptly took outside and burned.

It took a long time to pull the poison out. Deaton explained how it fed off Stiles' guilt and basked in his shame, then manipulated him into creating more shameful situations for Stiles to feel guilty about. 

“A parasite like this usually takes years to gain strength enough to effect judgment on that level,” the vet mused as they watched Melissa carry out Scott’s sixth bucket and Derek fill the last towel of his eighth. “It must have been eating very well from the beginning.”

When it was over, Stiles laid with his head in his father’s lap. His body felt limp and numb. His father smelled of lighter fluid and sorrow. Scott thanked Lydia, the Yukimuras, and Deaton profusely as he showed each of them out. Then he curled up on the mat next to Stiles. Malia followed suit by arranging herself against Stiles’ back. She pressed her nose into the downy hairs at the nape of his neck. As she moved, Derek made a sound Stiles has never been able to cipher the meaning of. He didn’t speak again that night, only stayed crouched at the boy’s feet, one hand dangling lightly against his foot. 

Stiles hummed as his father caressed his hair. The older Stilinski leaned down to press a kiss into his son’s forehead. “How are you feeling, Stiles?”

In the back of his mind he knew this would not be the last time the pack fought the ghost of the nogitsune. He knew better than anyone that it used kernels of truth in its manipulations. So the fear, dismissal, rejection, and abandonment he thought he saw from his family weren’t complete hallucinations. And when the time came, he’d have to battle _those_ demons. For now though, he focused on the love, acceptance, and support his family showered on to him. It allowed him to finally give an honest answer to a question he’d been asked so many times since that fateful night in the high school.

_“How are you feeling, Stiles?”_

“Better.”


End file.
